MENTAL DISABILITY LAW, SURVEY OF (3) (CRI507)

Professors Michael Perlin, Eva Szeli, Deborah Dorfman, Karen Owen Talley, Lisa Schatz-Vance, Richard Friedman and Keri Gould

This course is the gateway to all mental disability law courses as it provides a comprehensive look at many of the issues that will be considered at greater length in the more specialized classes, and provides the basic doctrines fundamental to the understanding of mental disability law. Students will examine the civil and constitutional bases of mental disability law in such areas as civil commitment; institutional rights (with specific focus on the right to refuse treatment); and deinstitutionalization, aftercare, and federal statutory rights (with specific focus on the Americans with Disabilities Act). Students will explore the role of mental disability in the criminal trial process, including criminal incompetencies; insanity defense; sexually violent predator laws; federal sentencing guidelines; and the death penalty. Students will also study the history of mental disability law and why and how it has developed as it has; and most importantly, why judges and fact finders decide mental disability law cases the way they do, to facilitate our predictions of future trends and outcomes. For master’s degree and certificate students, this is a core requirement which must be taken in the first semester.